ELYSIAN ▸ peter pevensie

━ [𝟬𝟯] the hurt cannot be much

╔══════════╗
chapter 3
the hurt cannot be much
╚══════════╝

Andy, in the barest of truths, is incredibly lonely and growing lonelier still the longer she goes without seeing her brother. It has been only a brief length of time since their last meeting – barely a few hours, perhaps – but it seems that this void in Andy has grown larger since then with new memories of Rayburn to cradle close to heart.

Odd that the need to have him beside her is so voracious and so unquenchable when Andy has done everything in her power to prepare herself for independence. (Preparation and execution are two separate processes, overlapping in the thin margin of preparation, which Andy unfortunately did not have the luxury of experiencing.)

The desolation she senses today, like a growing tumour, echoes in the reverse path of time to stain every memory she has with its fingerprints, but what she learns is nothing new to her. Andy does not indulge any delusion or falsehoods about anything in her life so she knows that she has been feeling this way for a while, and that it could be the leftovers from a grief that went unacknowledged for a really long time.

That, and being the last survivor of a dead race – a murdered race, she reminds herself – carries its own guilt and responsibility. Nevermind that Andy has forced herself to forget most of her childhood, but that negative space of has-been will continue to exist.

There are a few things that quell this need in the days Andy has spent waiting on Rayburn's letters and writing back to him, hoping that he understands the necessity of his existence in her life, the vital role he plays in being the conscience she can depend on even in moments of blind anger – which come in increasing fits as time stretches on and the ache of his absence does not abate – and the reason she cannot be left alone without his supervision.

Rayburn, stubbornly enough, seems to maintain the stance that Andy has underestimated her own strength of character but Andy is certain there is not much "character" to her outside of killing every last wolf and sending nonverbal signals to Jadis to watch out, i will burn you where you stand and send you straight to hell.

But that is just Rayburn, faithful and trusting with all the tenacity that Andy is certain she does not have in her – no, he inherited the best qualities, though their origins remain a mystery owing to the fact that they always grew up with a half-family and the barest minimum of a mother, with nobody real to lean against except each other. And Rayburn raised Andy more than any of their parents did – to little Andy, her big brother seemed to have had an innate benevolence in him.

He was born kind but equally vicious, cautious but untethered, a perfect balance of every extremity any one person can be. Andy is all rough edges, detached cynicism and clinical dispassion – yes, faithlessness included, which makes the Narnians' aversion to her participation in this war an understandable, wide-spread sentiment (but they do not complain because the alternative – her power under the Witch's hand – is worse).

This differential in between two children of the same mother can be faultlessly attributed to their separate fathers, but Rayburn has never treated her as anything less than a real sister. There is no halfway for either of them.

So, when Rayburn instructs her to care for the Narnians, she does it with full conviction for his sake, even if that means forfeiting evening patrols to answer a probably-false alarm from Tumnus, who requests her presence at his house for tea with an unexplained urgency.

This naturally warrants that Andy risks abandoning this part of the forest and undertakes the thirty-minute trek to his house through the chilling and bitter weather that has descended on the kingdom with a newfound vigour, as if in response to every Narnian's hope for spring at this time of the year.